The Career Pack
by Panthers of darkness16
Summary: The time of the games is upon us. This there will be some changes on how things turn out. The careers are allowing a tribute from one of the outlying districts join. Not uncommon, but when this tribute has trained with the careers thing begin to get intesrting. Holding the attention of Cato Atko is no small feat. The question is who is she?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I do NOT own the hunger games plot or characters. They belong to Suzanne Collins. Quite a bit of this chapter is similar to the book and that is simply because I wanted to make a few changes. **

When I wake up, the other side of th bed is meant Prim must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping. I get up quietly and get dressed before doing my hair in its usual braid. As I put my boots on I notice that damn cat isnt sitting watching Prim sleep. Almost out the door i see the stupid animal and he hisses at me to which i reply " I`ll still cook you." To that i recieve no answer. I make my way out of the house and through our part of the district we call it the Seam. Normally this time of the morning you will find miners filling the streets on their way to the days work in the mines, but seeing as today is Reaping day most people are taking advantage of beingabl to sleep in and spend more time with their children before two this afternoon. I only have to pass a few gates to reach the scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from the woods, in fact enclosing all of District 12, is a high chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire loops. The fence is suosed to be charged at all times but rarly is. Even so, I always take a moment to listen carefully for the hum that means the fence is live. Hearing nothing i slip through a small gap in the fence and head for the trees. Not many people are brave enough to venture int the woods without weapons but i feel safe enough as soon as my fingers find the bow my father had made for me. Its one of the few things i have to remember him by. As i wander farther into the woods and head to the meeting spot i share with one other person. Gale.

"Hey, Catnip," says Gale. My real name is Katniss, but when I first told him, I had barely whispered it. Gale holds up a piece of bread withan arroow sticking out f it. Ilaugh and sit next to him pulling out the piece of cheese Prim left out for us a gift.

"What did it cost you?" I asked

"Just a squirrel. Think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning," says Gale. "Even wished me luck."

"Prim left us a cheese." I showing him the cheese.

His face breaks into smile. "Thank you, Prim. We'll have a real feast." He says then adds, "I almost forgot! Happy Hunger Games!" He grabes a few berries from the bushes hiding us. "And may the odds —" He tosses a berry in my direction.

I catch it in my mouth and I finish"— be ever in your favor.I watch as Gale pulls out his knife and slices the bread. I cant help but watch him and think we could be related n how clse we look to each other but all families in the seam resemble one another in a my mother and sister differ form the dark hair, grey eyes and pal complection. Prim gets it from our mother whowas born and raised in the merchant side of town working in her family apothecary. She only left after meeting my father and moving to the seam with the one person she came to love dearly. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

Gale spreads thecheese over the bread slices and i grab some more berries to go with our small feast. As we settle down to eat we glance about the valley invisible to all. We sit quietly looking around thinking about today. The sky is a beautiful shade of blue and not a cloud in the sky but a heavyness hangs in the air. As i dread standing in the square at two o'clock waiting for the names to be called out.

"We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly.

"What?" I ask.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale.

I don't know how to respond. The idea is so preposterous.

"If we didn't have so many kids," he adds quickly.

They're not our kids, of course. But they might as well be. Gale's two little brothers and a sister. Prim. And you may as well throw in our mothers, too, because how would they live without us? Who would fill those mouths that are always asking for more? With both of us hunting daily, there are still nights when game has to be swapped for lard or shoelaces or wool, still nights when we go to bed with our stomachs growling.

"I never want to have kids," I say.

"I might. If I didn't live here," says Gale.

"But you do," I say, irritated.

"Forget it," he snaps back. For a few seconds i am perplexed. Why would he even suggest leaving the district when i have Prim and my mother to think about and he has his family. Gale lost his father in the same accident that claimed mine. I ofte think back to the day we met. I was a skinny twelve-year-old, and although he was only two years older, he already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade and begin helping each other out.

Anyway if Gale really wants kids it wot be hard for him to find wife. All the girls whiser as he goes by in school and talk about how good looking he is. It makes me jealous but only because i would lose my hunting partner if he chose someone to marry. "What should we do today? Hunt, gather or fish" I ask.

"Let's fish it will be a nice to enjoy tonight once we are home." He says

Tonight. After the reaping, normally everyone celebrates, well everyone but the two families whos kids get chsen for the games. We do pretty well today and once we are done fishing we head to the Hob, the black market of district 12. It was once the building used to hold coal but once an easier method was founded the hob took over residency. We trade a few of the fishes for things our families need and give the greens we managed to find to Greasy Sae, the bony old woman who sells bowls of hot soup from a large kettle in exchange she gives us couple of chunks of paraffin. Gale and I divide our spoils, as we have always done since we stoped fighting and became friends.

"See you in the square," I say.

"Wear something pretty," he says flatly.

At home, I find my mother and sister are as about ready for today as theywill get. My mother is wearing a simple dress while Prim wears the outfit i did on my first reaping day.A tub of waits for me to scrub myself clean for the reaping. Once i get out and have dried myself off i wrap the old towel around myself and head to my room to find a soft blue dress laying on the bed for me with shes to match. Once i m dressed my mother comes in and does my hair and i let her. I try to give her some things that she believes she is needed for. Prim comes in as my mother finishes putting my in place and comments on how pretty i am. I then notice she has a tail in the back of her shirt.

"Tuck your tail in, little duck," I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.

We then head to the kitchen to eat a small quiet meal before the reaping. At one o'clock, we head for the square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death's door. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you'll be imprisoned.

The camera crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect.

People file in silently and sign in. Anyway, Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive. The square's quite large, but not enough to hold all of districs 12`s popuation.

I find myself standing in a clump of sixteens from the Seam. We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls. I stare at the paper slips in the girls' ball. Two of the three chairs fill, Mayor Undersee, who's a tall, balding man, and Effie Trinket, District 12's escort, fresh from the Capitol with her scary white grin, pinkish hair, and spring green suit. They murmur to each other and then look with concern at the empty seat.

Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read. It's the same story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. That we have little chance to survive another rebellion.

The Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle starvation.

Haymitch Abernathy, happens to be the only victor that we have though is drunk like and bubbly as ever, Effie Trinket trots to the podium and gives her signature, "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!" She goes on a bit about what an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows she's just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors. Through the crowd, I spot Gale looking back at me with a ghost of a smile. As reapings go, this one at least has a slight entertainment factor.

It's time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always does, "Ladies first!" and crosses to the glass ball with the girls' names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not me, that it's not me, that it's not me.

Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And my nightmare has come to life.

It's Primrose Everdeen.

A/n: please review and let me know what you think. Welcome to any and all suggestions. thanks!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: same disclaimer as the first. I have had quite a bit going on and honestly lost some interest in writing this and going to pick back up. I will update as often as i can. thank you for your patience, please review.**

**Chapter 2**

It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do 's how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as the name bounces around the inside of my skull. There must have been some mistake. This can't be happening. Prim was one slip of paper in thousands!

Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair. And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It's this detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail, that brings me back to myself.

"Prim...Prim!" I yell walking quickly towards her. The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.

"I volunteer!" I call. "I volunteer as tribute!"

There's some shock on the stage. District 12 hasn't had a volunteer in decades. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much means death as, volunteers are all but extinct.

"Lovely!" says Effie Trinket. "Distric 12`s very first volenteer. Come, Come."

Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"

"Prim, let go," I say harshly. "Let go!"

I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see Gale has lifted Prim off the ground and she's thrashing in his arms. "Up you go, Catnip," he says, in a voice he's fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my mother. I steel myself and climb the steps.

"Well, bravo!" gushes Effie Trinket. "That's the spirit of the Games!" She's pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. "What's your name?"

I swallow hard. "Katniss Everdeen," I say.

"I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don't want her to steal all the glory, do we? Come on, everybody! Let's give a big round of applause to our newest tribute!" trills Effie Trinket.

To those words the people of District 12, no one person claps. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

Then something unexpected happens. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you I am truly in danger of crying, but fortunately I am able to hold off the tears for now.I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance.

"What an exciting day!" she warbles as she attempts to straighten her wig, which has listed severely to the right. "But more excitement to come! It's time to choose our boy tribute!" Clearly hoping to contain her tenuous hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that contains the boys' names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to the podium, and I don't even have time to wish for Gale's safety when she's reading the name. "Peeta Mellark."

Peeta Mellark!

My head whips around to stare at Effie. Just my luck. Because I recognize this name, although I have never spoken directly to its owner. Peeta Mellark.

No, the odds are not in my favor today. I watch him as he makes his way toward the stage. Medium height, stocky buildand ashy blond hair. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, you can see his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm I've seen so often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place.

Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year at this point — it's required — but I'm not listening to a him? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn't matter. Peeta Mellark and I are not friends. Not even neighbors. We don't speak. Our only real interaction happened years ago. He's probably forgotten it. But I haven't and I know I never will. . . .

It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in the mine accident three months earlier in winter. The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. The district had given us a small amount of money as compensation for his death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time my mother would be expected to get a job. Only she didn't. She didn't do anything but sit propped up in a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Once in a while, she'd stir, get up as if moved by some urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. She seemed to forget she had two kids to takecare of. I was terrified. All I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a mother as well. At eleven years old, with Prim just seven, I took over as head of the family. But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to death. There's no other way to put it. I kept telling myself if I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious grain and oil to feed us. Only there were still several weeks to go. We could well be dead by then.

Starvation's not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn't seen the victims? Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It's always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one.

On the afternoon of my encounter with Peeta Mellark, the rain was falling in relentless icy sheets. I had been in town, trying to trade some threadbare old baby clothes of Prim's in the public market, but there were no takers. By the time the market closed, I was shaking so hard I dropped my bundle of baby clothes in a mud puddle. I didn't pick it up for fear I would keel over and be unable to regain my feet. Besides, no one wanted those clothes.

I couldn't go home. Because at home was my mother with her dead eyes and my little sister, with her hollow cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn't walk into that room with the smoky fire from the damp branches I had scavenged at the edge of the woods after the coal had run out, my bands empty of any hope.

All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. But it crossed my mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher's or rotted vegetables at the grocer's, something no one but my family was desperate enough to eat. Unfortunately, the bins had just been emptied.

Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker's wife, telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash. As I carefully replaced the lid and backed away, I noticed him, a boy with blond hair peering out from behind his mother's back. I'd seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn't know his name. He stuck with the town kids. His mother went back into the bakery, grumbling, but he must have been watching me as I made my way behind the pen that held their pig and leaned against the far side of an old apple tree. The realization that I'd have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired.

There was a clatter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again and the sound of a blow, and I vaguely wondered what was going on. Feet sloshed toward me through the mud and I thought, It's her. She's coming to drive me away with a stick. But it wasn't her. It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were scorched began to tear off chunks from the burned parts and toss them into the trough, and the front bakery bell rung and the mother disappeared to help a customer.

The boy took one look back to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in my direction. The second quickly followed, and he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.

I stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for the burned areas. Did he mean for me to have them? He must have. Because there they were at my feet. Before anyone could witness what had happened I shoved the loaves up under my shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about me, and walked swiftly away. By the time I reached home, the loaves had cooled somewhat, but the insides were still warm. When I dropped them on the table, Prim's hands reached to tear off a chunk, but I made her sit, forced my mother to join us at the table, and poured warm tea. I scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. We ate an entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.

I put my clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep. It didn't occur to me until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me. But I dismissed this. It must have been an accident. Why would he have done it? He didn't even know me. Still, just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely resulted in a beating if discovered. 1 couldn't explain his actions.

We ate slices of bread for breakfast and headed to school. It was as if spring had come overnight. Warm sweet air. Fluffy clouds. At school, I passed the boy in the hall, his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his friends and didn't acknowledge me in any way. But as I collected Prim and started for home that afternoon, I found him staring at me from across the school yard. Our eyes met for only a second, then he turned his head away. I dropped my gaze, embarrassed, and that's when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year. A bell went off in my head. I thought of the hours spent in the woods with my father and I knew how we were going to survive.

To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope. And more than once, I have turned in the school hallway and caught his eyes trained on me, only to quickly flit away. The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Peeta and me to shake hands. His are as solid and warm as those loaves of bread. Peeta looks me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it's just a nervous turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays. We are ushered into the justice building for our final good-byes.


	3. AN: please read

**A/N: Not an actual chapter.**

FIrst I`d like to apologize for not updating in awhile. Ive had some computer issues thought my computer died on me taking some chapters i have written but was able to get it to work. I will be updating soon as i can once i have the chapters reviewed and typed. Thank you for your patience .


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